Fantastic! I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with, and I really appreciate the help. No landmass is complete without dungeons in my opinion. I'm sorry I haven't organized the dungeons as much as the Azura City interiors yet. I think I give some decent guidelines in the eponymous thread here, but absolutely let me know if you have any questions. And especially if you think of any resources you think would be a great addition to the tomb.

Something to note for tombs in Lyithdonea is that because House Azura doesn't support the Red Mountain Ghostfence with the souls of their ancestors, small ghostfences can still be found in their ancestral tombs. I would like to incorporate the use of souls and sacred remains a bit more here than we see on the mainland as well. For instance, I planned to have special lanterns/lights for the tombs which were powered by souls among other things. So if you have any ideas (there are no dumb ideas here) then let me know. This isn't fully fleshed out yet.

Another thing to note: feel free to have your dungeon tell a story. Not a quest necessarily, but having things to give the area some history of its own is a good thing to attract the player's interest.

Hope I'm not overwhelming you, and don't let my comments about SOUL STUFF! hamper you from making progress, it's something that I don't have a lot of resources for yet anyway.

Looking good, Moritius. I've seen what you did over at NodTown, and I hope that I can work at tjat level some day.

Now to hijack the conversation a little. Do you have any concepts out for those miniature ghost fences, I am interested in that?

Second note being is there a chance of having a large ancestral tomb (much larger than any on Vvardenfell). I always enjoyed ancestral tombs, but I have always been disappointed that they were all on the small side (although I think there should only be one that's an exception to this). I'm not sure how you'd explain a huge one like that, maybe it could be along the lines of an old government run tomb for the poor? That's just my two cents though, let me know what you think, also I'm sorry to get so far off track.

Well, there was planned to be a large series of catacombs under Drakhis (Lyithdonea's equivalent of Necrom, city of the dead). Someone quite skilled at such a task had offered to do it for me a couple years ago, but it never ended up coming to fruition. I still plan to have catacombs under there, but it's not my highest priority. But I'll get to it.

To your first question: there is... but I am not happy with it anymore. If you go to "Azurian Isles, Daruum Ancestral Tomb", you'll see my first mockup. The "az_furn_ghostfence_post" was meant to be the "generator" for the fence. But it's a little too unholy necromantic rather than sacred necromantic for my taste. So I'll probably recycle it for something else in the Scabrous Residuum ruins. But feel free to use the ghostfence pieces (az_act_ghostfence) in the tombs (I can make smaller variants if they're getting in the way of the layout).

Also note that depending on what Moritius' idea is for the "ghost lights", I was considering modifying "az_light_v_brazier_wall_256" to be eerier to fit the bill.

I don't want to reveal much about the main quest, but I will say that at one point you can get adopted into House Azura and are able to access the House's ancestors for advice, quests, small talk, rewards, etc. So there will be a reason to visit the tombs...

P.S. I am going to be gone camping for the weekend starting tomorrow morning, so if I'm less responsive, that's why! Thanks again for offering to help out, Moritius!

Well, atm I have no idea what to do with those Soul Lights - at first I thought about lamp with common soul gem in it's center but nothing in my mind fit to Velothi architecture.

Melchior Dahrk wrote:Thanks again for offering to help out, Moritius!

It's no problem. I think I'd start to work on interiors for Project Tamriel (because more likely my work will see the daylight ).

arrianas wrote:Looking good, Moritius. I've seen what you did over at NodTown, and I hope that I can work at tjat level some day.

Well, I'd never relased any interior including mod as standalone - I only made some projects for Polish community (we had similar idea once - we made flying city and stuff ). Sometimes I'm not sure if my interiors are good enoug for audience .

There will be more, I have some ideas.
What do you think about new vampire clan? Atm I'm working on next dungeon (still tomb ) with some vampires inside and I think no Aundae, Berne or Quarra will fit. If you want, I can create new clan .

Azura hates Vampires. For there to be an active gathering of them in Lyithdonea, they would need to be very well hidden given that the isles are relatively densely populated. Given that, I'm not sure how easy it would be to justify unless they are masters of Illusion (possibility...).

If there are vampires, they would need to be unique from the clans on Vvardenfell. Function differently. Different culture; not just a new name. Given the Akaviri influence in other areas of Lyithdonea I'm thinking they could perhaps be some type of Tsaesci (vampire-snake) cult who are seeking to ascend to a greater state of existence.

But this would somehow need to tie into the whole curse of Molag Bal deal in the lore unless they aren't regular vampires.

Going down that train of thought, maybe they aren't real vampires at all, being closer to a cannibalistic cult. But the imbibing of sapient blood through certain rituals leads to limited physical transformations giving the cult members slightly serpentine features (slitted eyes, elongated canines, upturned and slitted nose, etc). But most people would just call them vampires.

But if I'm going to be going to that work to create some custom faces for these guys, they'd need to be there for a reason... have a purpose. I've already written the main quest for Lyithdonea and the only place I can see them fitting in would be if they sided with the bad guy... and, no that wouldn't really make any sense. Plus I already have 3 potential faction questlines to consider... I can't take on another.

Alright, well final determination is that I think the idea could be cool, but I don't know how I'd fit them in... give them a purpose to be in Lyithdonea. Why wouldn't they just set up camp somewhere they wouldn't be heavily persecuted?

Instead of vampires, maybe we could do something else... I'm trying to think of what might desecrate a tomb in Lyithdonea... maybe mad spirits... OR... maybe minions of the main antagonist in the main quest... hmmm, that could work. Look for the Cthonachs and Entites in the mod.

You know, I started to work on hidden passage and chambers inside tomb (atm I'm fixing scripts). Well, if not the vampire clan, maybe some mad necromancer who resurrects some daedras (I can try to make undead textures for them but I'm not certain I success)?

Yeah, necromancer could be done. I'll probably place the tomb entrance inside or near the Scabrous Residuum where they have a foothold.

There is an Undead Winged Twilight I made with the creatures, there are some other things in there too. Should be plenty to work with. The undead winged twilights are considered highly profane in the Isles so they have good shock value for the inhabitants.

Hmm, I like the idea of having visual cues that the tomb is corrupted, but I'm not sure about corrupted souls. It's not really a possibility in TES that I am aware of. Souls are really a type of energy, if anything. It could be converted or siphoned, yes... perhaps we could have some instruments with black soulgems which are drawing in the souls that were used in the lights and fences. Could have some red or purple particle effects or lights on them to give the anti-blue soul look.

Normal soul color reminds restoration magic (restore health and others), maybe corrupted by some sort of instrument or smth should look like destruction magic (drain/damage health and others). Well, so much ideas and stuff.

Well, perhaps for the "corrupted" stuff, we could go with something purple like the soultrap effect. But I'd rather it be more of something affecting the existing stuff rather than just recoloring them. Let me try to show what I mean (give me a minute)...

edit: oh, I took so long to respond I see you used it I like what you've done there!

Hmm... well I tried out making a couple different corrupted versions of the ghostfence and I did not like it at all. So I don't think that will visually work. However, what can be done would be to use a mix of the blue soul lights and these "corupted" purple ones. These are encased in what is essentially some type of artificial morpholith which can siphon the soul energy from the tomb. But that's not really important, I think they're visually attractive for the role. There's a visual glitch with them right now that I need to take care of though.